indefinite attention and any dangers in sliding off of the democratic course in this regard? >> host: thank you so much. professor john lewis gaddis is joining us next to the history and biography tenth. welcome to booktv on c-span2. we have taken two calls already. i want to see if you have any response to these callers. the first caller asked about lester brown and his books. not sure if you are familiar with his books that he talked about the upcoming potential global wars such as a war over fresh water. >> guest: who can say? it seems to me in some ways we have always had these kinds of risks out there, risks of war over natural resources of one

kind or another. many people think they are because population is increasing exponentially. if you look at population trends in many parts of the world the population has -- birth rates have begun to drop dramatically. i am not convinced this is automatic that there will be these kinds of wars. for that happened there would have to be these huge growths in population and it may be modern technology operating in other ways is contributing to a decline in that. one may offset the other. >> host: how much if any of the cold war was about natural resources? >> guest: relatively little. it seems to me very little was about natural resources. the cold war was about telling a power vacuum in europe left by the defeat of hitler. the cold war was later about nuclear-weapons and the means of deterrence and the cold war was about ideologies, capitalism and

democracy vs. communism, to some extent the cold war was about personalities. if you think about the other cold war that developed which was the one between communist china and the soviet union that was about personality to a considerable extent. khrushchev andmao. resources not so much. possibly this will be different in the future but i don't think that with major. >> host: the second question was about russia but also about historically 9/11 and the response to 9/11. >> guest: i heard part of it. it was about surveillance particularly. no question that the levels of surveillance have grown enormously and to some extent that is connected with 9/11. a useful thing to do studying

history is to drop dramatic -- if 9/11 had never happened would surveillance increase? it might be. that is tied to the technological developments that are there. we can surveil at increasingly ambitious levels. 9/11 may have accelerated the process but that technology is probably irreversible and we are going to be living with that kind of surveillance for the foreseeable future. >> host: "george f. kennan: an american life" is the name of the book that john lewis gaddis was talking about a little bit earlier. if you saw his presentation. if not very quickly, john lewis gaddis, what were george f. kennan's official titles? >> guest: his titles were chiefly not very impressive. considering his reputation. ambassador to the soviet union, ambassador to yugoslavia, chairman of the first policy in

the state department and never secretary of state, never a political figure of any conflict. his role is in the role of ideas. the idea of containment as a way of avoiding the extremes of war or peace after world war ii. the critique of american foreign policy particularly of nuclear weapons during that period. the great histories that he wrote in the last half of his life. titles were not very important. i asked george once what title would you like to be remembered by and he said teacher. that sounds good to me. >> host: is years of activity? >> guest: astonishing because he would be 101 and active right up to the end. >> host: u.s. government -- >> guest: much briefer and not that brief. he was an officer from 1945-1950. he is ambassador in 1952 soviet

union and gets kicked out. ambassador again in 61-63. yugoslavia. that doesn't go well either so he resigns and that is in as far as his government service is concerned. everything else was done in the private sphere. >> host: next call for john lewis gaddis from james in college park, maryland. >> caller: looking forward to getting your book. i am a big fan of george f. kennan. could you elaborate on his insights and observations of psychological makeup when he was in russia during the second world war? >> he was in russia for the last two years of the war. he has been in russia before that. he had probably as much exposure to russia as any american did in that period. when he made observations about

psychology was more often the psychology of the leadership and that was stalin in that period and the critical observations that he made was however amicable relationship with fallen was, the expedia and see, no basis for a lasting relationship because stalin's psychology was one of trusting no one around him and because stalin was an absolute dictator that distrust of everyone and everything was projected on to the behavior of the soviet union itself. that is why we could never have a normal relationship with the soviet union. >> host: "george f. kennan: an american life," pulitzer prize winner for 2012 biography. next call kenneth in san diego, calif.. >> caller: i would like to ask

whether -- sinking fast and slow -- strategies thinking. >> guest: the answer is yes. i am thinking about that right now. that book came out after i finished writing my book. one of the things that i teach at yale is strategy and so we deal all the time with the question of whether it is better to have one big idea to be a hedgehog, or to be a fox. to have a bunch of adaptable flexible ideas. i think one of the answers to that is it is important to be both but it is important to know when to the witch and thinking fast and slow, offers some basis for thinking about that because thinking slow is having a grand plan that you keep coming back to. a sense of direction in whatever you are doing. thinking fast is adapting to the unexpected things that happen to you along the way. i do think it has relevance but it is not something i was able

to bring in the book. >> host: which president was george f. kennan closest to? >> guest: closest to john f. kennedy by far. disapproves of every other president under whom he served except calvin coolidge. interesting because kennedy certainly did not follow his advice. that is why kennan resigned as ambassador to yugoslavia. partly because kennedy as a younger man deferred to kennan and sought him out and sought his advice. kennedy had read kennan's histories and respected his historical writing and that was part of it. like many of the rest of us george f. kennan was susceptible to flattery and jack kennedy was capable of giving flattery in a way that lyndon johnson would not have bothered to do. there were other people lyndon

johnson might have flattered but george f. kennan was not one. >> host: david, rochester in new york, you are on with john lewis gaddis. >> caller: it is an honor to speak with you. a couple years ago a book came out called by hawk and dove, george f. kennan and the history of the cold war written by -- paul's grandson. comment on the relationship between paul and george f. kennan and our george f. kennan was treated in that book. >> guest: i think highly of that book. nick thompson is a friend of mine and we talked about it a lot when he was writing his fourth. he was very helpful in my writing my book but he has a difficult task because i had a vast trove of papers and diaries. paul was a different kind of policymaker. he kept few things on paper. it was in his head. make had to write that from the

standpoint of knowing him as a grandfather than from knowing him in the way that i write george f. kennan as a historical figure. i like very much the quote that hall nasa had when asked late in the life of both of them about their relationship they remain friends through all their arguments. paul said very cheerfully we have always george and i agreed on everything except substance. >> host: next call from paul in westminster, maryland. >> caller: professor gaddis, will you speak about stalin's fear of the peasantry? was it based on the idea that when the holding was an that, to the communists furies? >> guest: interesting question and something we need to know more about.

i think stalin feared the hasn't tree if and the intellectuals and the army. stalin feared everyone. a student will ask the questions that you had never thought of before. just this summer i was teaching some high school students. one of them asked given the attitude of the peasantry and the fact that their land had been expropriated and they had been repressed and combining that with the attitude of the east europeans, if there had ever been a red army of western europe with the red army troops have remained loyal? after 40 years of thinking about the cold war i had never thought about that question until this kid asked it. i learn a lot from my students i can tell you. i don't know what the answer is but it was a great question.

>> host: how well known was george f. kennan during his lifetime? >> guest: quite well known. he was one of the great public intellectuals of the cold war period. when his article be anonymous article that appeared in foreign affairs in 1947 with a mysterious title x which laid out that strategy, that made him famous. if he had signed the article george f. kennan no one would have noticed. signing it x may have an immediate figure. he was always from that time a very prominent individual and because he was a beautiful speaker and because he wrote compellingly and he was extremely visible he had a great deal of influence as a public interest -- intellectual. he was not a television personality because television preceded him. when he would do television quite often on his favorite

program macneil/lehrer, he was brilliant on television. this was someone who in his day had a great deal of influence. people read what he wrote and agreed and disagreed but he was a figure of great consequence. public intellectuals like that, once they die or become inactive, tend to become invisible fairly quickly. one thing that has been interesting to me writing this goat and publishing it some six or seven years after his death is the number of people who still remember him and the number of people who is still think it was important he played a role he did and happy to have a book on him. i feel very lucky in that regard. >> host: how did you get to know him? >> guest: i got to know george as a young cold war historian. you cannot do cold war history without dealing with george f. kennan. i interviewed him a couple times

and i wrote a book called strategies of containment which came out in 1982 and settled lot about george f. kennan's strategy of containment and started getting fan mail from george f. kennan hand written. you have understood my view is extremely well. i write back and say thanks and he sent another one. there are three of these. i had only met him three times at that point but i began to wonder is he angling for a biography of? i wrote and asked and he said it never occurred to him anybody would want to write his biography but now the tide brought it up we should talk about it. so we cut a deal on the third time i saw him that it would be a posthumous biography. he would never see it. but i would have to o access to him, his papers, family and friends and all of that. that gigantic act of faith on his part, a leak in the dark,

remarkable decision in retrospect, and the more i think of it all the more remarkable that he took me on completely untested. >> host: john in baltimore, you are on with -- professor john lewis gaddis. >> caller: i have a question. as a high school instructor i was interested in exporting what you discussed with your reliance on the classics and the new curriculum you have been doing and being your opinion i was wondering which classics do you think could be used to best in for u.s. foreign policy regarding the situation in israel. >> guest: the problem with influencing u.s. foreign policy is policymakers don't read classical works. nobody in government has the time. henry kissinger famously said years ago that policymakers bring into the job the

intellectual capital accumulated before they took the job and they draw down on it and that means what they learned in school. our program at yale is not a program of trying to influence current policy in any regard. we are not a think tank or anything like that. we are trying to think about what kinds of books you want the leaders of the country who may not be the leaders of the country for another 30 years what books would you want them to read and that was how we think about it. if as of byproducts leaders get curious about what we are doing or wants to see our curriculum or something which does happen that is fine and we are happy to have the come and talk to the course but we don't have the illusion that we can somehow recommend to secretary of state clinton or president obama what they should be reading now on current issues. they have people who do that for

them. >> host: what did george f. kennan think of the house committee on un-american activities? >> guest: he thought was horrible. george f. kennan thought that mccarthy and mccarthyism was appalling. he was particularly upset because some of his closest friends fell victim to mccarthyism. robert oppenheimer, development of the a-bomb who was head of the institute for that study was one of the victims of mccarthyism. many state department colleagues were fired because of the activities of the senate committee that mccarthy was running and the house on american activities committee. this is what happens when a democracy runs amok and he really had very skeptical views about what democracy was workable and was american democracy workable and he would be the first to say that was a low point in the history of american democracy that period of time.

>> host: next call for john lewis gaddis from oregon. you are on booktv on c-span2. >> caller: thank you for your wisdom and putting words into writing. my idea, you mentioned only 20th century theory, quantum. i wanted to get your idea what quantum theory means to you and how it is being talked in the university's. >> guest: you may have misunderstood. i don't remember having mentioned quantum theory. what i did say was i think the theory has to be understood in two ways. is useful as a way of generalizing. i am talking about how historians and international relations specialists use theory. not how mathematicians use theory. theory is useful in generalizing

about the past and finding a pattern. i mentioned frank fukuyama's end of history democratic peace but what i was trying to make his it is dangerous to use it as a guide to the future because the future has so many unknownss senate. the nice thing about the past is we know it better than we know the future so theory can be a guide to the same pattern but i would be skeptical of anyone who tries to use it as a way of predicting the future. >> host: where did you grow up and when did you get interested in the cold war? >> guest: close where our first caller was from. laredo, texas. a tiny little town of the road from there. i was indicated all the way through at the university of texas in austin. >> host: your cold war interest? >> guest: came from the timing of this. it came from going into graduate school in the mid 60s.

this was a time at which the first documents on cold war history from the american side were becoming available land any history student has got to have a topic and i was interested in having one where i could count on having press documents and maybe a lot of documents in time so that is how happened. was not a grand plan. the timing of it was very lucky. more documents came out on the american side than the european side end-1990s we were forced to rethink what we had written as the documents came out from the soviet union and china and eastern europe. at this point i had graduate students who had necessary languages so the timing of the worked out very well. >> host: what did george f. kennan and jean edward smith will be joining us for a call in

program. what was his view of eisenhower? >> guest: george f. kennan have a lot of respect for eisenhower. no respect for john dulles. for eisenhower a great deal of respect. because george sensed as many people did that he was different from his superficial appearance and manner. eisenhower was a master of being underestimated and giving the impression that he was a light weight when in fact he was running the whole show and the critical point came as early as 1953 after dallas had fired george f. kennan. eisenhower hired him to study top-secret study group to rethink the idea of containment

which dollars had been criticized and so they do this secretly over the summer at the national war college and there are three competing task forces which come up with opposite conclusions. george f. kennan recommended continuation of his own policy and in kennan's memoirs he describes how eisenhower took over this meeting when reports were presented, wove them all together in a sense is no one else had thought of and everyone in the meeting walked away from that with no question whatever about who was in charge. there was a lot of respect for eisenhower. a lot of disagreement with his specific policy of building up nuclear weapons and deference to nato and this type of thing but personally for eisenhower a lot of respect. >> host: next call from orange county, calif..

>> caller: is it accurate that november of 1967 on lbj's request, kennan recommended that the u.s. continued involvement in vietnam? reverse the original position suggesting that the u.s. withdraw? was kennan in that majority ended the idea of the formation of a wideman developed from biscuits -- mcnamara was the essential -- to the you believe was central? >> guest: the whiz kids and wives to 4 different. the with kids are mcnamara's advisers when he takes over the pentagon codify and defense policies. they're coming out of think tanks and they are young and

strategists and mathematicians. the wise men where an informal group of advisers called in by lbj. kennan was never part of that group. kennan came out publicly against the war in vietnam. in 1966 before the senate foreign relations committee -- lbj would not have invited kennan to the white house as one of the wires men. as far as i can tell kennan went to the white house once in the johnson administration and that was the ill-fated arts and humanities festival that lbj tried to organize in spring of 1965 as the war was escalating. it was so disastrous that lbj him upstairs through most of the proceedings. kennan is often regarded as one

of the wise men and the walter isaacson book uses the title for a collective biography and kennan is one of the six but the actual term is from a group that was informing johnson and kennan was not part of that. >> host: last call from professor gaddis from lou in springfield, missouri. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i understand how homer's iliad would apply to containments but how does the odyssey apply to today's condition? >> guest: how does the odyssey of 5 to today's condition? the odyssey applies to everything. that is home. the genius of homer was to come up with characters so universal that they continue to have great relevance and salience. if you take this idea i was pitching earlier about foxes and hedgehogs and people who know just one thing and people who

know all kinds of things, achilles and ulysses. achilles knows only one thing. what does he have to do to become famous for all time? get killed in troy. odysseus' for ulysses knows all kinds of things which center around surviving and getting home to ithaca and penelope. these great characters summarized a huge amount of human character through all time it seems to me. >> host: one of your questioners in the tenth hole little earlier talked-about history moving faster. i would like you to expand on that in case people didn't hear that and also is our system set up that diplomat such as george f. kennan can develop today? >> guest: the second part first. i have done a couple talk that the state department since the book came out and are always get

that question. could kennan have arisen in the current state department? i think it is unlikely. it is not anybody's fault but the state department is now 20 times bigger than it was. the state department than could fit into what is now the eisenhower executive office building. you see the state may be building. all three departments sitting in that building. that tells you something. they all knew each other. they were a community and the state department of the 1920s and the 1930s showed admirable tolerance for the eccentricities of george f. kennan. i always thought george f. kennan resigned from the foreign service more times than anybody else in the state department would always come back and say don't do it. ..

technologies available to us. it was just making the point that if you ask about -- look at history through aviation, you would say history has not changed much in the last 60 years. we still fly at exactly the same speed. on airliners that, if anything, are less comfortable than they were then. if you look at the speed of communication, and the declining cost of communication, that is a totally different world. from the world when the first jetliners were developed.

and in that sense, yes, it looks like history has speeded up. but i'm going to be flying to england next week, and i think i'm going to have the sense, as i fly there that history is moving very slowly indeed. >> john gaddis is the author of this book "george kennan: an american life." he joioioi@é